Ramblings, ideas, problems, and solutions

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  • Disable Autoplay through a registry hack

    Autoplay is one of the most wildly annoying features I know. I just dislike inserting, let’s say, a TechNet CD, and have Windows open Internet Explorer and display a lot of useless information that I don’t care about.I would much rather browse through the file system of the disc, and go directly to what I need. Luckily, you can create a registry key to disable Autoplay:
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  • Resolving "This file contains repairs made to it by Word"

    I had a user call in about a rather wordy error message whenever she’d save a file for the second or more time.
     
    "This file contains repairs made to it by Word. Saving the file will make these repairs permanent. It is recommended that you view the repairs before saving the file."
     
    I had a hunch this was related to the template file normal.dot, so I ran a search for it, deleted all instances I found, and restarted Word. When Word the rebuilt the normal.dot file, the error was gone.

  • DME Sync: "Invalid or expired certificate"

    My employer uses DME Sync to synchronise email, calendar and contacts from Lotus Notes to mobile phones. A nifty little app, it basically connects to the webmail server, then downloads and uploads the relevant data. This makes for smooth migration from one phone to another, and means the users have the data where they need it, when they need it.
     
    I recently pushed the app to a user’s phone, only to have the user tell me the install failed. He said it flashed an error message saying “Invalid or expired certificate”. No matter how many times I repushed the package, he’d get this error.
     
    Consulting with one of the admins for the system, I asked the user to check if the date setting was correct. As it turned out, it wasn’t. As soon as the user set the correct time and date, the install went through without a hitch.

  • Notes hogs resources when logged on to Sametime

    A user called in a case, telling us that when she was using Lotus Notes, her computer would run much slower, and the process nlnotes.exe would take up most of the available CPU capacity. Thinking that the problem lay in the fact that she had Notes installed to her server share, we first installed Notes locally, to see if that solved the problem. It didn’t.
     
    Still thinking that the problem lay with all of Lotus Notes, I tried maximising the Notes window, as one of our Notes experts had suggested that might help. Unfortunately it didn’t, although to begin with it seemed to. The user reported that all was fine until she logged into Sametime. Consulting with the Notes expert again, it transpired that this is a known issue in the version she was running 6.5.4, which was resolved in version 6.5.6.
     
    An upgrade later, all was well again.

  • Gears + Dropbox = Mobile computing

    I’ve been looking for a sturdy, simple and preferably free solution to enhance the way I take my computers with me. I’vew recently found just that.

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  • Decrypting Windows’ Minidump files

    When a Windows computer crashes, it will, if possible, write a minidump-file (filetype *.dmp) to the hard drive. These files are usually located in %SYSVOL%\Minidump, and they are usually called something like Mini042809-01.dmp. The problem with these files is that they are not exactly easy to read; here’s a small extract of my last minidump:
     

     
    Luckily, Microsoft has made a set of tools to help us decrypt them. Debugging Tools for Windows are available for most versions of WindowsSimply download, install, and enjoy.
     
    After installing the toolkit, and the symbolset that follows my install of Windows, the minidump is readable, and the conclusion is found at the end, and can look something like this:
     
    Probably caused by : wanarp.sys ( wanarp+1d9b )
     
    or like this:
     
    Probably caused by : USBSTOR.SYS ( USBSTOR+4980 )
     
    or even like this:
     
    Probably caused by : win32k.sys ( win32k+3445 )

  • Unable to open Excel documents from Windows Explorer

    Over the last year or so I’ve had at least fifteen users complain that when they double-click an Excel document in Windows Explorer, Excel opens, but no workbook. They then have to open the document manually in Excel.
     
    Here’s how to resolve this problem:
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  • Microsoft Office: Send To Mail Recipient (As Attachment) Greyed Out

    I had a user contact me about not being able to use the function Send To Mail Recipient (As Attachment), as the button was greyed out. Previously he’d only used Excel via Citrix, and had used this function a lot.
     
    Checking out the problem, I found that the solution was to reinstall Office.

  • Microsoft Word – generating a new normal.dot-file

    I recently had a user call in with a problem; whenever she’d open a word-document, word would flash an error message, then to open in safe mode.
     
    Normal.dot is the default template file in Microsoft Word. Because it contains a lot of customization settings, it is prone to corruption. Thus, many problems experienced while working in Microsoft Word can be attributed to this file. The most common fix is to force generate a new, clean version of this troublesome file. Here’s how: (more…)

  • Resolving "Cannot load BTrez.dll- NW" errors

    I had a client call in the other day, telling me that her computer would freeze up and display error messages whenever she opened Windows Explorer. The error message said Cannot load BTrez.dll- NW. Checking BTrez.dll with ProcessLibrary, I found that the error referred to a problem with the drivers for Bluetooth.

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  • Seven tips for more efficient Googleing

    Since its start in 1998, Google has grown to become one of the largest search providers in the world. Here are seven tips to using Google more efficiently: (more…)